e-learners unite!

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It's the oldest trick in the book: to cheaply search for new e-learning clients, create an interest group and milk it. But unlike some, ElNet - a professional association launched in April - isn't a creature of any particular vendor, product or industry. It's about e-learning people. Martine Barclay, ElNet's president and also learning and development manager of business application training at KPMG, says the group came about by word of mouth when "a number of us in e-learning realised there was no forum for networking".

"We wanted a networking environment for individuals, not a sales environment for companies," Barclay says. "We do accept corporate sponsorship such as room hire to offset the costs so people can participate. But there's online collaboration through our site. One is around project management and another is around trends. That's the real reason for ElNet."

After attracting 120 members at $135 each, last month ElNet held elections for its inaugural committee. Dion Groeneweg, a committee member who works in a "hire-to-retire" human capital management consultancy, is keen to keep the fledgling organisation in vendor-neutral territory.

The absence of vendor input allows the group to encompass the broad church of e-learning.

"It's learning via technology," Barclay says. "It's a whole range of different things: the virtual classroom, online courses, and a new trend that's coming through, learning in chunks via email. But people are nervous about doing e-learning. They like to know other people are doing it and they are not reinventing the wheel."

To find out what this really means - to business at least - ElNet undertook a survey of HR managers in 30 of Australia's top 100 companies, spending an hour with each.

"There have been huge lessons learnt by companies that have implemented the technology early - which is why ElNet is so important," Groeneweg says. "There's a lot of opportunity for people to learn and share . . . We have to change the mindset that you don't have to be physically present to be part of it."

Both Barclay and Groeneweg say one of ElNet's main attractions lies in its diversity, in the cross-pollination of ideas between industry sectors.

"My background is from learning development but there are some people from IT, some developers and some vendors," Barclay says. "We have members from the corporate sector because they want to learn more about the VET sector. The association is also to improve the e-learning that's already out there, by sharing what we learn and learning from each other."

Groeneweg says a key ElNet benefit is the access it provides him to e-learning experts, even though he considers himself an expert in learning management systems (LMS).

"I've managed some big implementations," he says. "But a big area will be around content - how standards are emerging, maintaining the standards and tracking the learning experience. And we need to make it more sound from an instructional design point of view, not putting up old PowerPoint presentations and saying 'this is e-learning'."

So far, ElNet has staged three events in Sydney, one "mega-workshop" in Adelaide and a "kick-off" in Melbourne. The Sydney events covered corporate and educational e-learning, content standards, plus virtual classrooms and gaming. Groeneweg says that as the association grows, the best value will be online.

"You get access to a community in discussion forums where people can come and get free advice," he says. "If you have a particular interest, you can start your own (emailed) discussion thread. It's very flexible."

Groeneweg describes the group as "a fantastic organisation that's going to allow e-learning collaboration in Australia and New Zealand". Barclay says one of the new committee's first tasks is to "go forward and nationalise in every state", starting in Melbourne and Adelaide.

"We had between 60 and 100 people attend each event so there definitely is a need for it," he says. "For a lot of corporations it's the LMS question: do we or don't we want to do it? For developers, it's meeting the learning need but also it's in creating exciting sites, particularly for the younger generation."